The Nugget Page 7

  The briefer didn’t know what to say. The skipper pointed him toward the door and off he went, a visibly worried man.

  EIGHT

  The Enterprise air group consisted of four squadrons for this mission: one each of fighters, dive bombers, scout bombers, and torpedo bombers. Standard procedure was to launch the fighters first. Their job was to set up a protective combat air patrol on stations around the carrier formation. These were F4F Wildcats. The next to go were the long-range dive bombers, which now were all SBD3As, armed with 1,000-pound bombs centerline and a 100-pound incendiary bomb on each wing. They were to be followed on this strike by the scout bombers, also all SBDs. Normally scout bombers, as their name implied, were sent out ahead with lighter bomb loads, because their primary mission was to locate the enemy. If they found them, they would report and then attack, using a 500-pound bomb hung centerline and two 100-pounders on the wings. This time, they would be armed like us. The torpedo bombers, each carrying a single Mark 13 torpedo weighing 2,200 pounds, were the most heavily laden, and thus the last to launch in order to have enough fuel to make it out and back. The bombers would travel at high altitude; the torpedo guys would fly much lower, and would sometimes get to the target before the heavy attack planes did.

  The torpedo bombers were something of a special case. The word in the air group was that their Mark 13 air-dropped torpedo basically didn’t work. The planes that carried them, Douglas Devastators, had to fly straight, low, slow, and level in order to spin up the torpedo’s gyro guidance. Only then could they drop their weapons. Unfortunately, in far too many cases, the damned things would break up, run erratically, porpoise up to the surface, sink, or run circular, unlike Japanese torpedoes which were always lethal. That long, slow, straight approach to an enemy target presented the enemy’s defense gunners a big, fat, non-maneuvering target. It was such a suicidal maneuver that the Navy came up with a bizarre smoke tactic. A fighter or a bomber would fly perpendicular to the torpedo bomber’s approach line, emitting a smoke cloud. Once the smoke settled on the ocean, the torpedo bombers would begin their approach to the target, and then, at the last minute, burst out of the smoke cloud, launch their fish, and escape. Talk about a Rube Goldberg idea. Unfortunately, war at sea is a come-as-you-are situation. That’s what we had, so that’s what we sent out.

  The fighters got off in good order, and our SBDs all made it off the deck without incident except for one, whose engine began acting up, forcing him to get back onboard. And then, like through so much of the Midway operation, we waited. We waited for the Scouting Six guys to get airborne, and then for the carrier to bring up the Devastators with their ponderous one-ton torpedoes slung centerline. We’d been orbiting over the task force, burning up our fuel, for an hour and fifteen minutes before the last torpedo bomber got off. And then we were told to wait some more, while the other two carriers got their warbirds sorted out and up in the air. After almost a two-hour wait, our admiral, Raymond Spruance, had had enough. He ordered his two CAGs to get going. We were given the best estimated position of the enemy carriers and told to go get ’em. The coordinated, all-in-one strike was history.

  Off we went, already aware that we probably didn’t have enough gas to get back even if we found them where they were supposed to be. If we had to go looking for them, then we knew we wouldn’t have enough gas to get back. It was not a great way to start off on a mission. Our CAG, Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky, took us up to a cruising altitude of 15,000 feet and told everyone to set up their engines to max conserve. At that altitude we could still breathe without tapping oxygen supplies and our engines didn’t have to scavenge for air, either. Somewhere out behind us were dozens of airplanes intent on the same thing, but hardly in a coordinated manner.

  Personally, I was still excited as hell. We were going after some of the carriers who’d brought all that death and destruction to Pearl, and there was a fair chance they didn’t even know we were coming. There were fifteen of us, all carrying half-ton bombs, and supposedly thirty more bombers from the other two flattops. If only two of us managed a direct hit, that carrier would be a sitting duck for all the planes coming behind us. Rooster was singing Civil War hymns back in his cockpit, Union and Reb. I kept going over the pre-attack checklist: Arm the bombs. Just before rolling in on the target, squirt a shot of ephedrine into each nostril to keep my eardrums from bursting as we tore down out of the sky. Check to make sure I’d armed the bombs. Dive brakes out to stabilize my trusty SBD as we came down on the near-vertical from three miles up, holding her steady as I watched to see where the guy before me had planted his bombs. Remembering the most important rule: aim for where that big boy is gonna be, not where he is right now. If the guy ahead of you missed to starboard, then there was probably a wind coming from port: allow for it. Don’t screw up: this is the Big Time, Nugget.

  Once we got to the last, best estimated position of the enemy carrier formation, we found a whole bunch of empty ocean. High white clouds at various levels, bright sun, and no goddamned Jap carriers, or anything else for that matter. Nothing. Miles and miles of empty ocean, and fuel tanks indicating below fifty percent. For the first time I was scared. Had the same staff planners who’d envisioned a coordinated, three-air-group strike blown the target location as well? Our CAG came up on the tactical net. Box search, he said in a calm voice, as if nothing was wrong. The entire air group followed him around as he began the classic box search pattern: fly north 10 miles, then fly east 15 miles, then fly south 20 miles, then west 25 miles, inexorably expanding the box. My heart sank. A box search was the last resort, and at some point, we’d have to face facts: fuel state would demand that we head back for the carrier.

  Then we caught a break: the CAG saw something down on that vast, fluid desert: a ship’s wake—a bright white scar pointing northwest. It was a warship. Had to be, moving at that speed. And he was on a mission, going as fast as he could to—what? The CAG had probably deduced that he was trying to rejoin the carrier formation, having been sent out to do something or other. The CAG turned the entire group onto a course matching that ship’s course, and ordered us up to 20,000 feet, attack altitude. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later, we saw more white scars on the ocean, four miles down.

  “Target in sight,” the CAG announced in a satisfied voice, which was the signal to arm our bombs and prepare for an immediate attack. He led us straight toward that formation, not having to worry about getting the sun behind us—it was going on noon. There were lots of patchy clouds, so our view of the Japs came and went, sometimes blotted out by white clouds, then crystal clear as we closed in on them. Something else became apparent: there were swarms of aircraft, down low, which seemed to be pursuing other aircraft. I saw three fires on the water, tiny yellow blazes from this altitude, but unmistakable: those were the fires made when a plane went into the water and exploded.

  “I see three carriers,” the CAG announced. “Bombing Six takes one, Scouting Six takes another one.”

  Our skipper came up. “Supposed to be four,” he said. “And what about Torpedo Six?”

  “I think they’re already down there,” the CAG said.

  That was a sobering observation. All those fires on the water and Zeros twisting and turning everywhere. By now we were close enough to see tiny black bursts of AA fire all over the Jap formation. The CAG and our skipper were talking the situation over as if this was just another fleet exercise. The bad news was that it looked like our torpedo bombers had run into a buzz saw. The good news was that the Japs were busy shooting down planes flying fifty feet off the water. Hopefully, none of them was looking up as we shifted into right echelon formation. I caught my first glimpse of Scouting Six behind us, also setting up the stairway formation.

  By now we could make out the carriers, and after countless hours studying enemy carrier recognition photos, we could even name them: Kaga, Akagi, Soryu. Rooster told me the CAG’s gunner was sending out precise locating information for the other two air groups, assumin
g they’d ever gotten off and come after us. I looked down at my fuel gauge, and then back out the canopy windows. I didn’t want to dwell on where I’d seen that needle pointing. The CAG made his assignments:

  “Bombing Six takes Kaga; Scouting Six take Akagi. We’ll leave Soryu to Yorktown and Hornet. And then we gotta find that fourth carrier. Rolling in in sixty seconds. I will lead Bombing Six down.”

  That must have irked our skipper, but the air group commander had the right to start the fight if he wanted to. Some CAGs stayed at altitude to direct the attack. Our CAG was not one of those. It was a little strange, actually, since our CAG was a fighter guy, not a bomber pilot. The fact that he had chosen to fly an SBD should have told us he was going to make the first dive. I checked my arming wires for the umpteenth time and told Rooster to sniff his joy juice. I did the same, and then watched as first the CAG and then our skipper rolled left and then pointed their noses down and into a steep dive toward IJN Kaga. Two more SBDs from Bombing Six’s Section 2 went next, and then it was my turn.

  “Here we go, Rooster,” I said, and then threw the stick over and down. That got me a yee-haw. I had a ringside seat for what happened next. The CAG released his bombs at around 3,000 feet, but it was clear that he’d aimed right at that big beast instead of leading it. Fighter guy mistake. His bombs fell behind the ship, which actually was bigger than Enterprise. The skipper did a better job, but still missed, close aboard, but close enough to have probably scared Kaga’s main propulsion engineers to death. The third bomber in the stack planted a 1,000-pounder on the last 100 feet of the carrier’s flight deck, right where a clutch of aircraft were spotted. The ship’s entire back end erupted into a huge fireball. The fourth guy missed to starboard, but, again, close enough to rattle the boiler rooms.

  I focused on that big red circle up on the front end of the carrier’s flight deck. By now the wake behind the flattop was bright white and really broad, which meant she was up at full power, 30 knots. She had a small island structure compared to Enterprise, and her smokestacks came out the side of her hull and pointed downward. I glanced at my altimeter as we dropped at 200 knots, and then back at where I was pointed. Altimeter. Aim point. Altimeter. Aim point.

  Move it forward.

  Altimeter. The air was screaming through the holes in my dive brakes now as I gripped the release handle.

  Altimeter. 2,500. Okay. I jerked the release handle and felt the plane buck as a half ton of fun, love, and joy left the belly, followed by the two incendiary bombs, their tails waggling like eager puppies as they followed the main event down. I wanted to stay in the dive to see if I hit her, but the ocean was coming up horribly fast and I was already pulling on the stick for all it was worth. I could feel the skin on my face sagging as the g-forces piled on and my vision narrowed down to a red-rimmed tunnel.

  Pull harder, clean up the flaps, pull, pull, pull. I thought I felt a bump, as if the bottom of my plane had actually touched the surface, but then, dear God, finally, I saw the sky-ocean interface rising into view ahead of me and I could relax the pull. Then Rooster was yelling something and opening fire with his twin thirties. I saw tracers whipping by at an angle on our left side so I jinked right, opening up Rooster’s field of fire. The tracers stopped as I clawed for altitude. I never saw the Zero who’d jumped us. I turned harder to the right and was rewarded by the sight of a huge fire on the front end of Kaga. Huge doesn’t really describe it: the almost 900-foot-long carrier itself was barely visible underneath the enormous bolus of 100-octane aviation gasoline–fueled fire rising into the air above the formation.

  “Nice one, Nugget,” the skipper said from somewhere above me. I was about to say thank you, sir, when two blasts of AA fire hammered us on either side. I almost lost control as I dived, twisted, and turned to evade the gunners on what looked like a battleship I’d made the mistake of overflying. Then I added power, still twisting and turning, to get back up to where the rest of the squadron were regrouping. Off to one side of the formation I could see what looked like another carrier in the same shape as my target, more fire visible than carrier. Even farther away I could make out yet another tall column of black smoke, but what was burning was obscured by all that smoke. The skipper called a heading to return to Enterprise as I climbed to 15,000 feet. The big white clouds were still around, so I simply turned to that heading and went to max-conserve. I was afraid to look at my fuel gauge.

  Twenty minutes later another SBD joined up on me, and then two more appeared out of a cloud about a mile north of us. The squadron re-formed in bits and pieces for the next half hour before the first plane ran out of gas. The pilot, a skinny, older guy with a heavy Maine accent, came up on the tactical net and announced he’d run dry and was going down to ditch. I told Rooster to mark the chart with our estimated position. I knew all the other pilots were doing the same thing in case the admiral spared a destroyer to go out and search for the crew.

  “How we stand, Boss?” Rooster asked. He sounded nervous. He should have been.

  “Touch and go, Rooster,” I said. “If we can go straight in and land, we’ll make it. But just in case, find the ditching checklist and start making preps.”

  The skipper came up and asked everyone for his fuel state. The replies were not encouraging, and ten minutes later yet another SBD began a slanting dive down to the ocean three miles below, his propeller clearly no longer turning. We marked the chart again. At about this time two Enterprise fighters showed up and turned to lead us back to the Big E. Their heading was ten degrees to the right of the one we’d been flying. The SBD3A carried a homing beacon receiver, but it was only accurate to ten degrees. We must be close, I thought, but there were enough clouds ahead of us that I couldn’t see anything down below. Finally the skipper came up and ordered us down to get into the land-launch pattern. I looked at my gauge. Between twelve and ten gallons left. Fortunately we were gliding down at low power. Now everything depended on the order of landing.

  We finally could see the carrier when we broke through 4,000 feet, and she was blasting east into the prevailing winds, surrounded by what looked like dozens of aircraft. The whole air group had gone out; the whole air group, minus Torpedo Six, now wanted to land, with everyone anxiously asking to be me-first. The pattern, which was an imaginary oval 5 miles long and 2 miles wide at 3,000 feet, had three levels at 1,000-foot intervals, from which planes were being called down to the flight deck in the order of how desperate they were for fuel. I watched a half-dozen planes peel out and ditch while we were orbiting in the highest level of the pattern, quickly pursued by plane-guard destroyers.

  Between eight and ten gallons left, and now the pointer was bouncing around.

  “Boss! Traffic!” yelled Rooster. I looked up and quickly pointed my nose out of the pattern to avoid running into a fighter directly in front of me, his tailhook dragging about 25 feet from my nose.

  “Thank you, Rooster,” I squawked, easing us back into the circling crowd. He had realized I’d become distracted by the fact that we weren’t turning anymore. Facing to the rear, he’d had to unstrap, lift himself, and turn completely around, which is how he’d spotted the guy right in front of us. I’d been busy watching how well the guys who were ditching landed. Not everyone was achieving a nice belly landing down there. Some of the planes hit flat, bounced back into the air, and then nosed hard down and disappeared like a razor blade dropped into the water, the top of the plane just barely visible as it shimmered out of sight, seeking the bottom three miles down. By then I was on the downwind leg of the pattern, headed towards the back end of the carrier while keeping her on my port side.

  The Air Boss came up on the land-launch net. “Anyone at five or less?” he asked.

  I waited for a second and then replied. “Two one six is at five.”

  “Two one six cleared to make an approach.”

  “Two one six,” I replied and then began the long, 180-degree turn to line up with the flight deck. 216 was my sail number, painted on th
e fuselage. I called for the checklist and Rooster read me through it. Wheels down. Check. Flaps down. Check. Hook down. Check. Full pitch. Check. There was one guy about a mile out ahead of me. He settled down to the deck but then something happened. He yawed left as he came over the round-down, prompting the LSO to dive for cover into the catwalk. His left wing hit the left edge of the flight deck, flipped over, and then he crashed into the sea, disappearing immediately in a boil of foam and smoke.

  I expected the LSO to wave me off and was reaching for the throttle, but he didn’t. He jumped back up to his platform and extended his arms, paddles fluttering in the 45-knot wind over the deck. I swallowed hard and then concentrated on putting her down, centerline, nose up to force the hook into the wires, cutting the engine on the LSO’s command, and feeling the grunting stop as a wire caught my hook and brought me to a stop in about 100 feet. Instantly there were two wing-walkers in front of me, their hands crossed, telling me to hold still until my hook was cleared, and then directing me to taxi off the centerline so the next guy could get down.

  “Goddamn, Boss,” Rooster said softly over the intercom.

  “God loves us, Rooster,” I replied as I shut down the engine. We had between zero and three gallons left before all the instruments subsided onto their pegs. “He surely does.”

  NINE

  There was jubilation down in the ready room and on the flight deck in general. Three Jap carriers in one morning. Never mind that the strike had been as screwed up as Hogan’s Goat. The individual claims began to expand exponentially, with everyone claiming credit for at least two out of the three sinkings. Underlying all that, however, was the solemn knowledge that many of our casualties and missing in action were the result of our own mistakes, like holding an entire air group overhead for so long that many guys departed knowing they never had a chance to make it back, even before we departed. The skipper joined us finally after having spent a half hour up on the flag bridge, along with the CAG and the skipper of Scouting Six, briefing the admiral in detail. The elephant in the pilothouse was that there was no one briefing for Torpedo Six, because they had been wiped out. The skipper joined in the backslapping for a few minutes, but then signaled for silence.